Dec
6
revealing screen shot 1
revealing screen shot 2
What the hell, summer spell.
My name is Arianna Stern. This is a page with some of my freelance work. You can email me at arianna[dot]s at gmail[dot]com.
Nov
25
Please reblog and help find this young boy. He is the brother of someone I consider a family member of mine and anything will help right now.
please reblog this, regardless of where you live
attn NY people
(via robot-heart)
Nov
16
Pro-Feminist Bro: Male Ally Tips - Things You Can Do Every Day!
Please take a look at my friend Steve’s helpful (and quick) guidelines as to how men can support gender equality.
I was looking around for something that gives strategies that men can do to prevent rape and rape culture. Outside of Jackson Katz’s “10 Things Men Can Do To Stop Rape,” I didn’t find anything that was more recent. I put this list together as a handout for the male-identified training. I didn’t…
Oct
25
Chicago's Segregated Schools: A Case Study
TL;DR “Research in the 1970s blamed the inferior performance of low-income minority students on their poverty and family background—not their schools. But a meticulous reanalysis of the evidence, published in 2010 in the journal Teachers College Record, strongly indicted segregation. The authors, University of Wisconsin professors Geoffrey D. Borman and Maritza Dowling, found that ‘going to a high-poverty school or a highly segregated African American school has a profound effect on a student’s achievement outcomes, above and beyond the effect of his or her individual poverty or minority status.’ That effect was harmful enough to ‘deny African American children equality of educational opportunity,’ the authors concluded.” - from Steve Bogira’s article for the Chicago Reader
**Required reading for Abigail Fisher**
Some of the statistics in this story are shocking—for example, most black students in Chicago are going to schools that are 90+ percent minority. The author describes that reality as “apartheid conditions,” and I don’t think that’s too strong of a term.
“Integration” is a term that’s more or less disappeared from public discourse, but why? As a nation, we’re strikingly far from that goal, especially in segregated cities like Chicago. To me, it’s intuitive that diverse environments promote empathy in ways that homogenous environments do not. Are you going to sympathize more with a real-life human, or someone you had to imagine in your head, because no one who looks like that is around? Would you be sadder if someone in a book died, or if someone you knew died?
If you’re a minority kid at a homogenous school with few resources, and you’re looking at a homogenous white school with every imaginable resource, then that makes a clear, negative statement about the way your race fits into society as a whole.
Another thing that stuck out to me—while both of the women in the article seemed smart, aware of their position in society, and likeable, you can already observe the trend toward self-segregation by the end. Segregation starts in the schools, but it certainly doesn’t end there.
Oct
20
<——
Here I am in Brooklyn. A friend told me to apply for a job within her company, and after four interviews and an intercontinental flight, I found out that I didn’t get it. I stayed with her and slept on her couch, and stood naked in front of an oscillating fan with a 101 degree fever. I shared the place with four other women and only one bathroom. It was a sticky, humid late-September.
I’ve moved again, to a different part of Brooklyn. It’s gorgeous and tidy, but I’ll leave this place soon enough, too. I’m still looking for a job, while living off my savings and a bit of freelancing money. At home, I don’t have an internet connection, which means that I spend a lot of time just walking around, meeting sweet little puppies like this one:
The uncertainty of this time period doesn’t bother me—not deeply, anyway. Thanks to my parents and privilege, I’ll always have a place to stay. Psychologically and financially, I can afford to fail.
When I think back to my life one or two years ago, it’s striking to remember my frame of mind and daily habits. They were so different than they are now. My early 20s were a time of constant challenges and self-exposure, and yet I was so unsure of myself. Picture a wedding photo in which the smiling young bride is covered in newly-healed burns.
I flipped through my past blog posts and felt embarrassed at some of what I’d written. Trying that hard to be novel and clever is sometimes exhausting. Still, I also had this pointed feeling of loss, like the time I looked at a beach photo of myself and discovered that I didn’t look nearly as awful as I’d assumed. Here was a person who desperately needed my approval and whose vulnerabilities I’d ignored. Here was a person I never took proper care of, someone I’d hardly loved at all.
Sep
24
Q. Since it’s about Celeste separating from a man, not about her searching for one, did you think about how it fit in the canon of romantic comedies or about subverting those conventions? It seems like we’re seeing more of that on screen.
A. We tried to create an element of surprise: He’s her gay best friend, but he’s not very good at being gay. Women have been interesting forever. I’ve had so many women come up to me and say they were being fully represented, that they’re complex, and it’s O.K. to be complex, and it’s O.K. to be emotional one moment and really pragmatic the next. We’re going through a major evolution, and men haven’t had the same evolution. At some point we’re going to have to do something to bring them along. What are they doing? Get it together! We’re going to have an entire generation of smart, stable successful women go without men, because they’re just playing video games and dating younger girls.
—I finally read this New York Times interview with Rashida Jones, and boy, am I glad I did
Sep
19
family portrait
Sep
17
“True to the book’s title, Rothbart often turns his focus to his own failed attempts at romance. While he treats his platonic acquaintances as individuals, his love interests all blur together. They’re pretty, tragic, and unfamiliar; they do not have comfortable lives. ‘I’m always drawn to girls in the service industry—waitresses, baristas, bartenders, concierges, strippers—basically anybody who’s working for tips,’ Rothbart writes. ‘I dream of burrowing through their lacquered shell of professional friendliness to investigate the soulful edges I glimpse underneath.’” — me on Davy Rothbart’s essay collection, My Heart Is an Idiot, over at The A.V. Club
Jul
31
“Do you know how long it initially took us to produce At the Movies? Six hours! They would argue incessantly. If Roger [Ebert] talked for four minutes of a six-minute segment, Gene [Siskel] would holler, “That’s not right!” The same thing happened whenever Gene would talk longer than Roger. They demanded that the other didn’t get one more second of screentime. (Joe Antelo)”
—an excerpt from Enemies: A Love Story, posted on Slate.
I urge everyone to read this story, especially if you’re at all familiar with Siskel & Ebert or if you’ve lived in Chicago. The show was a brainy, populist institution that did good on behalf of the Windy City. Before reading the piece, which was printed in The Chicagoan, I had no idea that Siskel and Ebert’s rivalry was so marked (or funny). The oral history takes a very fluid form, and it’s informed by more than 20 speakers. For real, read it!
Jul
26
The night before last, my roommate slept over at her girlfriend’s house. Two days ago, I was diagnosed with a sinus infection, which I know is a minor health problem.
I hate being alone when I’m sick, even more so after getting calamitously sick in January. I lived alone then, and I staggered around my one-bedroom apartment, my consciousness pulsing on and off. When I woke up on the floor, at the peak of my illness, I thought I might die.
“I’m 23 years old,” I thought to myself. “I’m not going to die.” I thought it with solemnity and conviction, as though I was making a decision. While that idea was just as true on January 12 and 11, I do not need that reminder every day.
++++
I have a lot of needling phobias; it’s just something I live with. For me, it’s like getting the hiccups in your stream of consciousness. I hate to ride elevators and I’m afraid of being poisoned, which is probably the result of too many warnings about Halloween candy. It’s somewhat unpleasant, but it’s hard to nix a phobia, because it’s hard to un-imagine something.
In January, even after I decided that I wouldn’t die, I asked almost everyone who saw me for confirmation. I asked the two policemen who came to the door and the the man who rode with me in the ambulance. I asked the nurse and the doctor at the hospital, whose bathroom floor was sticky against my bare feet. The next day, I even asked my parents if I would live. Anything is possible.
One of my phobias is conditional. If I’m far away from home, I get scared that I won’t be able to return. I’ll get sick, or die, or become embroiled in some sort of conflict. Getting sick here has been difficult, and I’ve been asking others for reassurance. It’s hard when I’m alone.
The night before last, when my roommate left, her fickle cat crawled on top of my bed. I woke up every hour, because I’m taking pseudo-ephedrine. The apartment was still and the traffic outside was intermittent, but noisy. Periodically, I’d pet the cat a little, then fall back asleep.
I wish I could write that I’m growing less terrified of my body’s vulnerabilities, but that’s not really true. Though I can say that the opposite isn’t true, either—I’m not getting more scared. I haven’t developed any confidence in my own health, much less an overarching faith in the goodness of the universe. For the moment, I’ve just been telling myself to “see it through”—expatriation and my illness, my life as a whole.
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